


The Cleansing Power of Mountain Air

by myriadofnothing



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pre-Canon, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:27:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26785132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myriadofnothing/pseuds/myriadofnothing
Summary: Lost after his family's death, Derek trespasses in the mountain wilderness.
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	The Cleansing Power of Mountain Air

**Author's Note:**

> No. 2—In the hands of the enemy

It’s winter when Derek finds himself in the middle altitudes of the Sierra Nevada. The forest is coniferous and quiet except for the susurrus of the breeze in the canopy and the alarm calls of squirrels as he passes. He himself seems loud with the muted crunch of his sneakers in the foot-deep, damp snow and his breath working with the exertion of his trek.

It’s a cold journey in a leather jacket and sneakers, but the cold feels cleansing. Pain from numb feet and nose is an easy pain. The body is selfish; when it’s cold, hungry, and exhausted it clamors to the mind for attention. I am more important than emotional pain, it says, and the mind agrees. _I am cold_ becomes the mantra instead of _I am alone_.

This far up, the Sierra Nevada is largely untouched by man, though it is far from vacant. He hears animals beyond ridges, catches glimpses of them through the cover. Songbirds, unsinging for the season, rustle in the boughs. Foraging black bears keep their distance when they detect him, likely just as shy of him as a man as they would be of his shifted form. Small groups of mule deer paw at the snow to turn up edibles, huffing quiet signals to each other and bolting away through the snow.

There’s another werewolf up here, too. They move quietly and stay upwind, and must have been following him for some time before he notices. He hears the same subtle snow steps a few times through the afternoon, quickly aborted, something heavier than a coyote but lighter than a deer. It should have made him wary more than it did.

A group of them come for him in the night. A toe in the back wakes him. He lashes out at the next nudge, catching a leg and then losing it, a commotion starting up among the four others as they jostle back and forward again. Someone laughs. Derek is on his feet, turning to see them circled around him.

“What are you doing here?” one asks with amused confusion and a bit of challenge.

They are all older than Derek’s sixteen years, though not by much, four young men with worn but practical clothing and overgrown hair. Their eyes are bright in the moonlight and they move among themselves with the ease of familiarity. By their looks they’re unrelated, but still they’re brothers of the same pack. It aches him to see, even through the numbing of the cold.

“What are you deaf or something?”

“I’m just hiking through,” Derek says. He’d wanted to see the sequoias—no particular reason. It had been nice to have a destination; the days made more sense that way. But the sequoia groves were overrun with humans and he’d just kept going. No particular reason—only that the forest here was cold and quiet and far away from everything else.

“Hiking? You packed a little light.”

“Yeah, you had to stop for a snack,” another titters.

“A whole deer.”

“Two deer,” another corrects.

The group squares up, tensing.

“Our deer.”

Derek realizes he’s about to be in a fight with the betas of a wild pack. This is their territory; they lived in these moon-made shadows under the pines and firs. He’d poached from them.

“I didn’t know,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“He’s sorry.”

“He didn’t know.”

“Didn’t the humans teach you manners, city dog? Sit, stay, heel.”

Derek turns slightly to get an eye on each of the men. He could hold his own in a fight, and one of them looks on the scrawny side, but still, he suspects he’s going to get thrashed. There’s no way he could win four-on-one. In spite of that, a fight sounds good. It would be cleansing, just like the cold.

“You talk a lot for a savage,” Derek says. He shrugs out of his jacket and pulls on his other form, filling out his teeth and his claws.

More teeth and claws come out, some of the others backing up and some circling around.

“Take it easy, gentlemen,” says the one who’d spoken first. “Alpha wants to break him in himself.”

Someone behind him takes the first strike; Derek dodges and shoves him further into his momentum, and then all of them are crashing through the snow in a supernatural flurry of violence. The first time he’s pinned, he doesn’t let up. One of them ducks away from his claws; he rolls, throws elbows, and shoves back onto his feet.

They land more vicious blows after that; when he tries to run, they chase him. The next time he’s pinned, he knows he’s beat. His whole body hurts but his mind feels calm, like he’s underwater—water that's sweet and clear and so much better than the harsh waking air.

He thinks he smells butterscotch as they drag him through the forest. They're taking him to their alpha.


End file.
